Knowing and Responding to God's Love

This week's sermon focuses on Jesus healing a woman who had been bent over and unable to stand up straight for 18 years. He does the healing on the Sabbath, which was considered work. The religious official wastes no time in telling Jesus, the woman, and the crowd, that it is wrong to heal on the Sabbath since God commanded that the Sabbath be a special day of rest devoted to God--just check the Ten Commandments. The official, who was a man of God, didn't know the love of God well enough to know that God's love cannot be contained on the Sabbath, and that when Jesus looked at that woman, he really saw her and loved her. There could be no delay in healing her. It seems simple to us, but at the time, it was not as clear. What helps us know God/God's love now in a way that allows us to honor our traditions but also be open to new ways of doing things so as to share the love of God that we have known?

Cookout July 2010

Christ and Conflict: Sermon August 15, 2010

As we look to the Diocesan Listening Sessions on Faithful Sexuality and the Blessing of Same-Gender Unions this fall, I reflect on the divisions in the Episcopal Church, how conflict is part of our lives as Christians, and how God will see us through the issue of human sexuality that is set before us.

Sermon August 8, 2010

This week I'm preaching about faith. We have the wonderful verse from the Letter to the Hebrews: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." What does it mean to have faith? Well, it does not mean that we don't ever have any doubts or questions. In the Episcopal Church, we value the asking of questions. Tillich, in The Dynamics of Faith, is clear that doubt is always a part of faith. Doubt is in fact, not the opposite of faith. In her book Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris describes her surprise that a monk did not think that her doubts were a major problem. Rather, the monk said that, "doubt is merely the seed of faith, a sign that faith is alive and ready to grow (p. 63)."

Rich Toward God

This weekend's sermon deals with money/possessions and how we relate to them as people of faith. What does it mean to be "rich toward God." Our personal history with money and possessions has a lot to do with how we think about money today and how we hear the Gospel message. What is the good news for the poor and the rich in today's lessons?

Are you awake out there?

Hi! I wonder of anyone has noticed that I stopped writing the blog back in Lent? Yes, Alisha (spoth website and all around church tech), I know you have. Now that it is July (the end of the July) and I'm back from three weeks of vacation, I think I have the energy to blog again! Lent was not a good time for the blogging, after a certain point. What has happened since then?

We have another priest at St. Paul's on-the-Hill! The Rev. Dr. Ellen Richardson is now priest-in-residence. She is bi-vocational, working as a Hospice doctor all week and then serves with us as she is able on the weekends. She just covered the services for my vacation, for which I am so thankful. It is great to have Ellen and her husband Mark as part of our church family.

We also have an additional preacher! The Rev. Bruce Gallup is a retired United Methodist pastor and now a part of our church. Bruce preaches about every six weeks. It is great to have Bruce and his wife Ellen as part of the ministry team. Many thanks to Bruce for preaching one of the weekends I was on vacation.

Lots more has happened since March...more on that later. Peace!

Lost and Found

Tomorrow I'm preaching on something we all deal with - forgiveness. And we deal with it from both sides: we all are in the situation of needing to forgive someone or at least know we have the opportunity to do so, and we all need to be forgiven from time to time. Sadly, for such an important topic, this complex matter of forgiveness is often presented by Christians as being simple. It is not simple. Forgiveness takes time; there are stages we need to experience. God's compassion is for all: it is for us when we are lost in our own sins, when we have wandered far to a distant land, distant from our true selves...AND God's compassion is for us when we are in the situation of forgiving others...we can be lost in the pain of the hurt we have suffered at the hand of another. In both cases, God is seeking to help us. Through God's grace, we who have been lost are found...found, connected to our true selves and to God, when we know we are forgiven, and when we know we have been able to forgive others.